Prologue
“Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he. . . ?”
- Fairy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
In the mid 6th century B.C.E. (Before Cerulean Empire), the 5th Archmage, Vendri the Green, created the modern dungeon. Using what would now be considered questionable experimental methods involving gemstones and the trapped souls of animals or magical beasts, he set out to create A.I. or Arcane Intelligence, a type of magic following specific rules with the capability to grow as it consumed mana and energy from the external world with the goal that the object would eventually gain sentience. This experimentation eventually succeeded, as we know, with dangerous results. Vendri himself and most of his notes fell prey to the first dungeon he created, which is now known colloquially as the famous Wizard’s Tower, the oldest and highest level dungeon in the world. Since the inception of Arcane Intelligence in the form of dungeons, the ruleset seems to have replicated itself and become naturally occurring. Dungeons can be found around the world, and new ones awaken with relative geological frequency. While usually deadly, such a place can provide a significant economic boon to the region it occupies. However, some dungeons prove to be such a plague on the surrounding lands that no expense is spared to capture the stones, which can be used to fuel further A.I. research or re-written to support systems that allow many modern magical amenities to function.
- Introduction to A Brief History of Dungeons by the 17th Archmage, Evony the Red, 1396 C.E.
A small humanoid creature about two and a half feet tall, a fae, struggled against his bonds. A pair of cold iron manacles around his wrists prevented the use of his innate magic while an enchanted gag kept him from casting any spell he knew that required an incantation. The metal burned against his skin. He glared at a hunched over human in dark robes as the vile creature read from a book and measured out bits and pieces of various plants and preserved animal parts from various vials on a cracked stone table that looked like it had once been a resting place for some long forgotten hero. Now it was covered in candles, melted wax, scrolls, and various spell components. He was fairly certain he was intended to become one of them.
A fire burned in the middle of the room, casting light that danced with the shadows and didn’t quite reach into the pitch black corners. The fae could see that this had once been a memorial chamber of some sort, built at the end of a short natural cave system. His captor’s light had shown him stalactites and stalagmites like teeth in the mouth of an unusual beast as he had been dragged down to this room of carved stone. He figured it had likely belonged to dwarves once. He would have spit at the thought if not for the gag in his mouth. Dwarves. They always smelled of metal.
Red flames that pierce the dark and feed on night,
Prance and play, prey on this foolish mortal’s sight.
The fae strained his thoughts, willing his magic to cause the human to hallucinate. Without his magic bound by cold iron, it would have been a simple thing to twist the animal’s mind and conjure visions of whatever it feared or desired most. It was after all, what he was known for, and his favorite past time. It wasn’t that he disliked humans, per se. The one’s he encountered were just gullible and weak-minded. They made great playthings to amuse himself with, and if one died from time to time, well, that was on them for falling for his tricks. Certainly no one among the fae faulted him for it.
Red flames that pierce the dark and feed on night,
Prance and play, prey on this foolish mortal’s sight.
He repeated his thought like a mantra, over and over, as if sheer stubbornness would overpower the very laws of nature. Rules were made to be broken. He would not resign himself to his fate.
The human brought out a large red gem from a bag tied to a belt on its side. The gem was about six inches from point to point, shaped like two elongated pyramids connected at the base, with eight facets. Each facet bore a rune that seemed to drink in the light. As soon as it was free from the bag the fae immediately felt something tugging at him. His eyes widened as he recognized the runes for fae and soul. The thing was soul stone. The monster was going to trap his soul in it!
Red flames that pierce the dark and feed on night,
Prance and play, prey on this foolish mortal’s sight.
The captive screamed his spell frantically in his mind, while another part of his mind thought, no, no, no, no, no, no. The human mage began to chant and gesture, and several of the components on the table turned to glowing, magically infused dust and swirled into the carved runes. A darker red light began to pulse in the center of the crystal. The fae felt the pull get stronger. As the chant continued, the stone rose into the air and hung there. It began to spin gently.
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“Now for you, fairy” the human said to his prisoner as his chant ended and the soul stone hung above the table.
“Fmrhlrm hymm!” the fae responded into the gag, struggling physically against his bonds and repeating his spell internally. To his surprise, he felt the magic spark briefly before it died this time. Hope grew in his chest and he glared spitefully at the human. It continued talking. “It took three months to prepare this stone, and another three to find the right town beset by fairies and prepare the right trap for you. And you walked right into it!” the creature cackled with glee.
The fae stared in disbelief at the human. It was insane. What could possibly be worth six months of effort? Were humans really that bad at magic? Six months of work for a soul stone? What was the human going to do with it? “Feh!” he growled into the gag. None of the fae liked the derogatory, ‘fairy’. If he got out of this somehow, he was going to entice this human with its greatest desire right into a man-eating vine and watch him choke on the irony.
The human ignored his attempts at speech and dragged the fae’s small frame into the center of a mystic circle carved into the stone next to the table. Runes and other various magical diagrams had been painstakingly etched into the floor. The fae imagined this had taken another three months or so. Insane. From where he lay on his side, he could see two of the runes clearly. One said hold. Another, bind. He was admittedly curious. Those were usually runes written into a summoning circle. However, he wasn’t curious enough to want to die to find out.
A new incantation broke over the crackle and snap of the fire. This one was in a language the fae did not recognize, but the guttural sound of it felt the way he imagined swallowing cold iron filings would feel. He swallowed hard, forcing the contents of his stomach to stay down. It would not do for the great trickster of the fae to drown in his own vomit. Once his gorge was under control, he noticed the pull again, as if something inside him was being drawn out. He tried to kick and roll out of the circle, but his bonds were too tight.
As the chant grew louder and longer, the fae stopped his physical struggle and returned to his mantra. Again, he felt the magic begin, impossibly, then fail again. The mage’s chant ended and suddenly the fae found himself looking down at his body. He looked around and took in the room again.
The architecture was clearly dwarven, as he had thought, though the bricks of the walls had been hastily carved, so they were only bricks in appearance, rather than separate from the stone around them. Four pillars with dwarven reliefs supported the room and two steps led up to a dais that ran from wall to wall and took up a quarter of the space. The stone table sat in the center of the dias, directly across from a set of metal double doors a tall human would have had to duck through. An out of place, lavish bed sat against one wall, and dark oak bookshelves sat on either side of it. The bookshelves only held one or two books, several shelves of jars and vials, and what looked like a human skull.
He noticed the soul stone was spinning faster now, just fast enough to make the runes hard to read. His spirit felt drawn to it, but whatever force had pulled him out his body was holding him in place. He tried to will his incorporeal form to move, but failed. The human was nodding and talking to itself in a pleased tone. It flipped through the pages of the book, apparently looking for the next spell. Its search ended on a page in an unfamiliar language, but on the page opposite the fae saw a picture of two of the sides of the soul stone the prisoner hadn’t seen before. The runes on the facets read “bond, slave, dungeon, stone”. Oh, no, there was no way he was letting that happen.
Red flames that pierce the dark and feed on night,
Prance and play, prey on this foolish mortal’s sight.
This time he felt the magic pulse out across the room and settle on the human as it began to read the next incantation. Its eyes glowed fae gold for a brief moment, but the creature failed to notice. The fire popped loudly and the flames danced a little more frantically than before. The spirit of the fae smirked as it floated, suspended above the circle. He could tell his magic reserves were spent, so he didn’t bother to try again. Whatever happened now, happened.
“Alkr dra ak vieldr van, grolder vennek fahn da fenndas rak!” the human began. It sounded like nonsense to the fae. In all his years of existence, he had never heard such a language. Maybe the crazy human had made it up? But whatever it was, it was working. The crystal spun faster and the dark red light inside it pulsed like a heart beat and the fae’s spirit started felt its pull grow stronger. The chant continued. His spirit felt whatever connection it had to its physical form sever. The human began the incantation again, and the magical energy and the force drawing the fae into crystal strengthened and he felt himself begin to drift toward it.
“Alkyr dra ak vieldr van, grolder vennek fahn da fenndas mein!” the human said as it began the chant a third. The fae grinned wickedly. This was what he had been waiting for. The mage finished its spell, throwing its arms into the air and crying out the name of one of the human race’s dark gods.
“Mourne!”
That was when things started to go very, very wrong. The dark red light at the heart of the soulstone shot out like tendrils from the stone in every direction. One plunged deep into the human’s chest while another somehow wrapped itself around the fae’s spiritual body. The human screamed, “No, no, no, no, no!” and whipped its head to look at the fae’s ghost. “What did you do?” it cried helplessly. It was cut off before it could speak again as the tendril of blood toned light ripped the human’s soul out and pulled it into spinning crystal. It spun faster and faster. The fae smirked, in spite of its own predicament. Stupid humans.
The soul stone was now glowing like a red sun. If the fae had still been in a mortal form, it would have blinded him. The strand of light wrapped around his spirit pulled him into the crystal. It drew him in slower than before, the dark red light filling the stone as it did, until the glow in the room dimmed as the brighter light was forced through the murky lens. When all but the torso of his incorporeal form had been consumed, the suction suddenly ceased. The fae struggled to pull away, not knowing what had happened. Without slowing down, the soul stone came to a complete stop.
Then it exploded.